Colorful retailer Cabela's answers calls of the wild

Tuesday

Feb 26, 2013 at 12:01 AMFeb 27, 2013 at 7:15 AM

The sound of deer grunts and turkey calls will ring in the ears of customers as they enter Cabela's next week. It's all part of a menagerie of sounds and sights that makes the well-known outdoors chain, "the Disneyland of retail," said Jim Daugherty, the new Columbus location's general manager.

Tim Feran, The Columbus Dispatch

The sound of deer grunts and turkey calls will ring in the ears of customers as they enter Cabela’s next week.

It’s all part of a menagerie of sounds and sights that makes the well-known outdoors chain “the Disneyland of retail,” said Jim Daugherty, the new Columbus location’s general manager.

“I really like when people walk in,” Daugherty said. “They stand there and their jaws drop, and they have that 45 seconds of, ‘Awesome!’ It’s cool.”

When Cabela’s throws open the doors at 11 a.m. on March 7 to its newest store — and first in Ohio — customers will find everything that is common to the Cabela’s experience.

The store has an indoor “mountain” decorated with a taxidermy display of such animals as polar bears, elk and coyotes; a large gun section that includes antique and collectible rifles and pistols; an indoor archery range where customers can try out some of the long bow and crossbow selection; a large aquarium stocked with local fish; and a deli featuring smoked bison, smoked elk and wild boar sandwiches as well as about 40 flavors of fudge.

There’s also a large array of fishing and camping gear; clothing and footwear, both for hard-core outdoors enthusiasts as well as fashion fans; and home goods such as lamps, candles and toys.

It’s all there, even though the Polaris-area store, with 80,000 square feet, is less than half the size of the Cabela’s near Wheeling, W.Va., which has 175,000 square feet of space. It’s smaller, for example, than the Kroger Marketplace store in Dublin, which is 101,000 square feet.

The smaller “next generation” Cabela’s is part of a growing trend among big-box retailers, several analysts said.

“It’s about money,” said Pete Fantine, vice president and account director at SBC Advertising. “ Best Buy is the one most notable lately. They said they were going to save $800 million just by opening smaller boxes. They spend less on real estate, the building, the staffing.”

Cabela’s “can’t open 175,000-square-foot stores in too many locations,” Fantine said. Those stores tend to be in more remote settings, where real estate is cheaper. The newer stores, in contrast, are in locations similar to the Polaris area, where real estate is more expensive.

“It’s in a suburban, upscale area,” said Doug McIntyre, CEO of marketing and branding agency Cult Marketing. “Their model used to be to build a store out in the middle of nowhere where hunters or fishermen would spend hours.”

“This way they can open more stores,” Fantine said. “Instead of four, they can open 10.”

Indeed, Cabela’s has been opening stores at a healthy pace since the first one rolled out in 2008. With about 10 of the smaller stores open already, the Columbus store will be the first to open in 2013, followed by stores in Michigan and Kentucky, and two in Denver.

In the smaller stores, “we’ve become more efficient with our space,” spokesman Wes Remmer said. In Columbus, that includes displaying some of the stuffed animals on balconies and lurking on the branches of artificial trees, thus freeing a large amount of floor space.

Two large stuffed turkeys — both shot by Daugherty on a recent hunt — are perched on a tree.

“There’s still a lot of gear on the shelves,” Remmer said. “And anything you can’t find, there are kiosks everywhere in the store so you can order online and have it delivered free to the store."

Cabela’s is well-known in the retail world for its online and catalog business, and it’s another reason why the company can open a smaller store, analysts said.

“They’re very big on direct customer data,” McIntyre said. “They use it really well to keep customers loyal and coming back. Their merchandise can be specifically targeted by store.”

Targeting their merchandise according to the desires of local customers means that the Columbus store, like all Cabela’s, has different inventory, Remmer said.

In the new store, locally targeted goods include merchandise devoted to ice fishing, deer hunting and turkey hunting.“And fishing’s very big, because you can drive in any direction and find lakes and rivers,” Remmer said. “And people like to hike, to camp out, so we have a large selection of tents and backpacks.”

Cabela’s officials expect next week’s opening will draw a large crowd.

“We hope we’ll have a few campers bright and early,” Remmer said. “On Valentine’s Day in Saginaw, Mich., I got there at 4 a.m., and there were probably 25 or 30 people in line overnight."

tferan@dispatch.com

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